The Political Game.

The first Presidential debate is now over so I can blog at last. I had my priorities this evening. Speaking of which if you follow this blog you should also be reading GamePolitics. Have you figured out who to vote for to preserve the right to play the games you like? Have you been playing The Political Machine to see who will win in November? It seems my games of Obama and McCain keep coming down to Ohia and Michigan, can't win without them.

I've been doing some more resurgent MMO playing lately. My wife has been playing LotRO again sporadically and I've been playing Saga of Ryzom now that it is free to play. Free is a very good price for this MMO. It had a lot of features that were very promising for roleplayers, but in the end it remains a hall of broken promises and missing content. The mechanics are neat, but grinding gets old and you can choose to do that in any game. Never the less if you like MMOs you should check it out because there are numerous features that many good MMOs should copy from it. They have a great way of avoiding the class sytem and an interesting take on skills. Their faction system has a nifty way of gaining loyalty with factions... they just need some real incentives for actually doing so. The difference between a faction that totally loves you and one that is neutral is ... nothing. None the less you can grind it for the sake of seeing numbers scroll on your computer screen. I'll continue playing it while its free but I wouldn't pay anything for it in its current state. Say "Hi" to the lonely Pilgrim guild leader Svayvti if you stop by, the last Pilgrim leader of Atys.

I had a good post-PAX match up of Anima: Tactics at my friendly local games store (FLGS). My Church force Vs. Church Inquisitors Vs. Dark side. You can see me and the dark side player going at it to the right here. However, now that I've got the Konosuke figure from PAX... I've changed my playing allegiance to Samael for the time being. People seem to be down on them but I've found they can really put the hurt on. I've had one 300 point game with them and won it handily while still learning to field a Samael force. Good things appear to be in store with this force so lets hope we can really stir up a lot of local interest in this game.

In VOR news I haven't gotten any good games in lately with Scott and to a lesser degree myself being fairly busy. There is however a new Golden Growler contest going on. My wife took second place at the last one and I'm glad in this one we won't be directly competing. She is doing a Diorama entry for the Diorama contest and I'm doing a special character entry for the special character contest. Can you guess which special character I'm going to bring to life? For a harder question guess what Kirara's diorama will be of... You can see a picture of the fantastic trophies that Merc created. Will there be more good Shard entries? Last time I was totally impressed with Balrog's Shard Axion and thought is should have won first place. I hope we get more Shard entries ths time.

On the subject of RPGs, I've got yet another new RPG to try out. This one is the Chronices of Ramlar "Revised edition". The setting is classic fantasy, but the system mechanics are very intriguing and completely oriented towards hardcore roleplaying that I like. Tomorrow they have a RPG day at my FLGS and I'll see if I can poach some roleplayers to try and get a group going. Expect to hear a good deal more about Ramlar in the future. Shadowrun 4th edition continues to disappoint and their 20th anniversary is focusing on the failed Earthdawn crossovers rather than anything truly good and original from 1st edition. Smith & Tinker, please, please don't let me down in my hopes for a good Shadowrun game. Just trust Mike Mulvihill and Jordan Weisman because they made 1st and 3rd editions rock.

I'm getting back into the swing of applying for regular employment. Some of the jobs I'm well qualified for just look too boring. Would I like to make good money working in a boring downtown job for a soda distributor or dare I hold out for something interesting but less lucrative like game testing or working for government environmental consultants? I've inquired into both and potentially may have something next week involving contract work for Microsoft. We'll see what happens. Any ways it goes, my twice a month blog schedule I have going probably won't be impacted.

Peace and Fragging Happiness to you.

PAX 2008 is over, long live PAX!

Well it has taken me a while to catch up on things to blog again after PAX. Much is happening especially with a 3rd child on the way!!!

But back to PAX. Friday night of PAX I just enjoyed the show room mostly. My personal highlights were the Turbine booth, Stardock booth, Blizzard booth, and Nintendo Wii booth. I like seeing that Nintendo is making use of the balance board in future games coming out as Wii fit just doesn't seem to do enough on its own. Now if they'd only rush out an adapter for their wireless LAN on the wii because some of us don't like the security issues of wireless or need to unnecessarily upgrade our wired routers. Starcraft 2 impresses, hopefully it isn't a DRM let down like Spore was. At the same time Stardock made a showing of the Gamer's Bill of Rights. The battle is on and I fully expect Stardock to win it, put my money down on David rather than Goliath. Customers want to be treated like respected customers and not like criminals who are all suspect of being thieves.
Best PAX party award definitely goes to Turbine and LOTRO again this year and was supported by Stratics rather than IGN. Got to love a party with catering, games, and prizes! This year our whole family got awesome T-shirts and I won a "Razor" gaming mouse. The Mouse is actually spiffy and my ability to frag in CounterStrike is slightly improved! The girls as you can see fit into their shirts very appropriately.

I also got to try out the new character classes for Lord of the Rings Online expansion: The Mines of Moria. The Warden was an interesting character class, if you like a medium range Guardian with special solo conjunctions called Gambits then the Warden class will be for you. Myself, I was instantly hooked on the Runekeeper. This is a squishy caster class with nuking and healing, both of which are very powerful. Most people's reaction will be that it is overpowered and it would be if they could do both at once. Runekeepers have an interesting new dynamic where there is a slider based on what type of abilities you've been using. Are you tending towards greater attacks or trying to heal? As the slider moves towards damage or healing you get a boost to the effectiveness of the one you're using and a reduction in the ability to do the opposite. Also the slider being at a certain position is required for some of the more powerful abilities. So yes you can be an incredible nuking mage type if needed but you're healing abilities will be inferior to just using a potion, but if the encounter needs it you can be all healer. Very interesting gameplay and very tactical by the seat of your pants, I'm instantly hooked on it.

Saturday was Anima: Tactics tournament day and was disappointing in turnout. We didn't get the proper tables from PAX, Fantasy Flight didn't show up with terrain, and only 3 of us where there in an undecorated room to play. At least we had a healthy amount of interest in spectators. I also got to purchase the RPG book in advance at PAX along with a large character Konosuke who probably won't be in stores for another month yet. I sure hope next year the tournament scene is done a lot better.

VOR on sunday was also slow but got a lot of interested people looking at the battle Scott and I were having. Only two of us playing with paper terrain, but it was fun as always! With any luck if things keep up we'll be playing Vor 2.0 early next year. Next year PAX will hopefully be even more fun, I'm always looking forward to it!